New AC'97 (A3.95) drivers:
A3.95
1. Support Mono Out Select feature.
2. For special customize settings.
3. For SPDIF no sound issue.
4. Update Realtek 3D engine.
5. Support default PCM Out Volume adjustment feature.
6. Add customize settings feature for AMD CS5536 chipset.
7. Fix S3 hang up issue for AMD CS5536 chipset.
8. Install problem for Windows 98 se .

Maybe they fixed EAX with No.4...

Anybody seen
"Tech Report, Why Have You Abandoned Us So?"
Ars OpenForum 3.0b > Ars OpenForum 3.0b > Audio/Visual Club
New Topic by Hat Monster

I'd be curious to know if his flaming (it's well past a critique) has any basis in reality.

I had the problem of sounds being heard all the way across the battlefield in BF2. Is there a way to fix this? Should i get new sound card? Now its a AC97, on nforce4.

I tested my onboard realtek myself with rightmark and I find occlusion works fine, obstruction does NOT work, and how come my occlusion works? because I have a nforce4 board and use nvidia's audio drivers.
Therefore to say the codec are bad seems nonsense, especially if the article first points out the 3d stuff is all done in software with the onboard solutions, clearly the fault lies with the drivers and not the codecs, at least regarding occlusion, but since it's done in software I assume obstruction is fixable also.
I wish a site like the techreport was at least capable to think for itself and make the distinction between the chips and the software, as it is they are just enhancing a fuzzy webstory.
Of course a real audiocard remain a better solution, assuming it has drivers that work, and then we are suddenly reminded of creative driverissues and creative's long history of incompatibilities with certain motherboard chipsets, I guess the whole computer audio area is still needing more effort.

Forget about the onboard audio crap, if you really like to listen songs and like to play games,Creative audio cards are good choice.. (i am not in a mood to talk about the driver conflict and nforce 4 issue here)

I suppose the conclusion reached by this article (Realtek bites) shouldn't be a huge surprise, but it is nice to see it confirmed through controlled testing, rather than just hearsay.

For the most part, the state of onboard audio is still pretty sad. In the past ~6 years, it has gone from being mind-bogglingly atrocious, to being merely bad or (on the minority of motherboards that "get it mostly right") at least tolerable.

Part of this is attributable to the constraints imposed by trying to build a high-quality audio solution on a motherboard in the first place; limited board real estate and the constraints of a 4-layer layout make it more difficult to implement a high fidelity audio solution. Add to this the highly cost-sensitive nature of the motherboard business, and it is easy to see how poorly implemented onboard audio solutions using Realtek codecs have come to dominate the onboard audio market.

nVidia (Soundstorm) and VIA (ICEnsemble/Envy) both had an opportunity to usher in a new era of improved onboard audio. Both of them dropped the ball.

Maybe Asus' move to ditch Realtek for Analog Devices will provide the push the industry needs to finally get its act together on onboard audio. Whether that ultimately means an industry-wide shift to Analog Devices codecs, or if it prods Realtek to get their act together, users should ultimately benefit.

For those with nForce2-4 chipsets and Realtek codecs like ALC650/850, there's an alternative:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_audio_4.62_win2kxp.html
Has more sound buffers than the Realtek driver and supports EAX ;-)

I tested rightmark out on my Geforce6100 board, with a Realtek ALC655 chip, same results. I notice there are newer drivers than I have on Realtek's site, posted Oct 30th, so I'll try those and see if it's fixed. I doubt it. I do a bit of casual gaming, but never online, and no FPS for me anymore so I don't care about the lack of EAX working, but this is pretty curious. I wonder if they did this from sheer laziness, or to keep CPU usage artificially low?

in the 3d games that i've played extensively (Quake series, Battlefield series), i've never bothered to play with EAX. for me, even with the Audigy2 ZS, EAX just never sounded right. if i'm not mistaken, both Quake3 and the Battlefield series use the Miles fast 2D positional audio, which works just fine for me with my headphones.

Well, Dolby Digital Live allows you to have surround sound in games over s/pdif, bypassing the typically crappy dacs on motherboards. EAX 2 works fine on my nforce2 ftw

edit: supposed to be a reply to 76

Hi, I have an A8N-SLI with a Realtek ALC850, I can confirm that battfield 2 does have the EAX problem, where you would hear all the various sounds together when one uses the realtek drivers even with the latest driver 3.94.
I tried the nvidia 4.65 driver with BF 2, the sounds are as the should be, and not a whole orchestra of sounds, but sound quality is inferior and can not use SPDIF but only analog, hope there is a quickfix for this problem from Realtek .

So did anybody actually talk to realtek people about these issues? they seem to be blissfully unaware of the rest of the world being peeved about their failed EAX support

Evidently EAX no worky in Vista. Most old games will sound crappy compared to what we've been hearing. Good job MS.

http://openal.org/openal_vista.html

So if the support is so poor, and shows up so clearly in Battlefield 2 (and presumably elsewhere), why hasn't there been a big stink made about this before now? Do most gamers turn these options off in a quest for higher framerates?

Also, in this case you probably want to list what you're using for audio output: 2 speakers? 4.1? 6.1? Or perhaps headphones? (And how do the two implementations compare when using headphones?)

There's a reason that all my old Intel-branded mobos have nice little AD chips doing the audio. AD just seems to take things more seriously, while Realtek has the lowest overall price. It's just too bad that most of the really serious contenders in the audio spaces have been pushed out or dropped out (Aureal, Nvidia, others), while the mainstream has been continually dominated by the less capable (Creative, Realtek). It's not that the current stuff is junk, mind you, but I'll take my Envy24 card over anything in Creative's lineup for any workload that isn't 100% gaming, and it was about one eighth the price of the Creative card it fully replaced.

Stagnation is always bad for all industries, and PC audio has been developmentally retarded for years. I hope AD and Realtek can make generic HDA into a true competitor for Creative's near-monopoly, but I'm not holding my breath.

onboard audio? maybe if i didn't have ears. until then sb x-fi is the only card for my rig. even my mom's Aureal Superquad Digital still sounds freakin good.

I never knew any of them supported EAX 2.0. I guess I never paid attention.

This is a good sign. Just getting reviewers to cover the subject brings it to light and starts to pressure some honest competition in the field.

I'd much rather have a "good enough" onboard solution that bother with a dedicated card.

Some sound-bytes would have been great. I don't think I have ever heard proper EAX. Would be nice to hear what I am missing.

I'd suggest just picking up a card from Creative. At least they have a vested interest in having EAX and 3D audio actually work. A friend of mine picked up a pair of Audigy 2 ZS cards for $17/ea off eBay a few months back. Can't go wrong with that.

Kinda tricky thing is that a lot of those cards on eBay are OEM versions and so the retail driver CDs won't work without mods. Driverheaven forum has helpful threads.

http://hosted.filefront.com/BadBoyforum
Download the actual install CDs if you don't get one. Instructions on Driverheaven forum if you need to modify them.

Of course, if you know who the card was made for, you can just get drivers from them (Dell, Gateway, whatever).

I experienced the same problem on my Shuttle SN95 with ALC650.
I think every sound on the entire map was played at distortion levels.
The only way to play was with software audio.

Soundstorm on my NF2 was much better.

How do these onboard EAX implementations compare to a Creative card, such as a Live or an Audigy?

What's the difference between EAX 2.0 and the later versions?

Shouldn't you have tested different motherboards, BIOSes, and Realtek driver versions before coming to the conclusion that Realtek's EAX implementation is broken? I think we all have had quirky driver versions that work great on one system but not so well on a similar system.

This is not to say that I think Realtek's EAX implementation works great...

BTW, I never turn on EAX in games because it always seems to result in flakey behavior, bizarre slowdowns, and inexplicable crashes in games no matter what sound card or driver version I use.

Is there a P965/ICH8R motherboard that supports EAX with the AD codec?

Just a quick question: how do the two drivers compare when comparing CPU utilisations?

Thanks.

I prefer my headphones when playing a shooter. I feel like some games have much better 3d sound with headphones than with my 5.1 setup.

Does anybody remember that acronym for the technology that emulates what sounds your ears would hear from sources not in front of you?

I've used almost every CL sound card from the original Sound Blaster. The only ones I skipped were the AWE cards. I went from an SB16 to a Live and it was a world of difference. I haven't bought an X-fi yet though.

It doesn't really surprise me that the crab has messed up positional audio that badly. I'm sure only a minority of the people who use on-board audio actually play games. Most are business users that don't care how their little beeps and chirps sound.

Any gamer who at all cares how things sound will have a discreet sound card. Most likely CL despite everyone's preponderance to badmouth them. Not that they are totally undeserving of some of the criticism.

I'm glad this is being exposed for the budget conscious gamers among us but I don't necessarily expect Realtek to respond very quickly to it considering the market their product is aimed at.

I wonder how Realtek EAX performance compares to SBLive! performance.

I haven't bothered changing my SBLive! since 1997 or whenever it was - I use the almighty "stereo" setting in games for my pair of old wooden speakers (yes, real wood - not MDF) and most games sound just fine to me with EAX.

HL2: Episode1 (which I played from start to end last night) had particularly impressive environmental effects using my decade-old sound card.

The thing I've always liked about Realtek is that they provide the latest drivers on their web site for every chip that they make.

Other companies, such as Broadcom and Atheros for WiFi, and Analog Devices for audio, refer you to the device manufacturer, such as D-Link or Asus, for drivers. They use some lame excuse about the product being customized for each individual application. This is unfortunate because device manufacturers frequently lag behind the chip manufacturer on driver updates. D-Link, for example, is still providing Atheros drivers from 2003/2004 on some of its wireless cards despite Atheros releasing regular reference drivers.

Of course, if the reference drivers don't do what they say they do, I suppose that's no longer much of an advantage.